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Residential motels have long been places of last resort for many vulnerable Americans-released prisoners, people with disabilities or mental illness, struggling addicts, the recently homeless, and the working poor. Cast aside by their families and mainstream society, they survive in squalid, unsafe, and demeaning circumstances that few of us can imagine. For a year, the sociologist Christopher P. Dum lived in the Boardwalk Motel to better understand its residents and the varied paths that brought them there. He witnessed moments of violence and conflict, as well as those of care and compassion. As told through the voices and experiences of motel residents, Exiled in America paints a portrait of a vibrant community whose members forged identities in response to overwhelming stigma and created meaningful lives despite crushing economic instability. In addition to chronicling daily life at the Boardwalk, Dum follows local neighborhood efforts to shut the establishment down, leading to a wider analysis of legislative attempts to sanitize shared social space. He also suggests meaningful policy changes to address the societal failures that lead to the need for motels such as the Boardwalk. The story of the Boardwalk, and the many motels like it, will concern anyone who cares about the lives of America's most vulnerable citizens.… (plus d'informations)
Exiled in America by Christopher Dum is a fascinating look at not simply the people left behind in America but those actively shunned and often destroyed by their very government.
This is similar to Desmond's Evicted but, unlike some comments I've seen, does not cover the same group of marginalized people in America since most of the narratives in Evicted are people who had a narrative that was disrupted. Most in Exiled never had the opportunity to even begin a life's narrative before they were shunted into the furthest extremes of the margins. They made plenty of mistakes and were not innocent bystanders in their troubles but were definitely assisted in their downward trajectory by misguided policies as well as being stigmatized, often far more than deserved. That said, the narrative nature of Desmond's book makes it a far smoother read while Dum certainly uses some sociological terminology and concepts that, while specialized, are not hard to grasp. But it does disrupt the flow of the book.
I found Dum's conclusion and suggestions for change to be both on target and a bit vague. I know, how can they be on target and vague, and I am not sure I can explain it very well. While reading them, I was nodding along in agreement for the most part. Some specific ideas were very good. Yet when I finished and thought about how one might implement the suggestions, I found myself unable to come up with a lot of ideas without making my own additions in order to focus the suggestions. That is not necessarily a bad thing but I think a little more specificity and fewer broad sweeping statements as suggestions would help to get more readers interested in doing something rather than just reading about it as a sort of soul-cleansing exercise.
I would recommend this to anyone interested in the plight of the poor, the marginalized and indeed of the country. If we can't, or won't, take care of all citizens then what kind of a people are we?
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Not like the brazen giant of Greek game / With conquering limbs astride from land to land / Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand / A mighty woman with a torch whose flame / Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name / Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand / Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command / The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame / "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she / With silent lips, "Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" - Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus" (1883)
Dédicace
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
For Kim Gwang Soo and Kim Young Sook, who brought me into this world, and for Donna Hoffman and Richard Dum, who gave me the chance to explore it.
Premiers mots
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
In 1993 National Public Radio (NPR) reporter David Isay arrived in the South Side of Chicago with a remarkable idea. -Preface
The run-down, "no-tell" motel is a classic sumbol of tattered Americana, a staple in old fashioned horror movies and alongside busy highways. -Introduction
It is 11 am as I drive out of the Riverfort County jail parking lot with Reg and his girlfriend, Sky. -Chapter 1, Biography of a Residential Motel
Citations
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
A criminal history substantially reduces the likelihood of job callbacks. In an experiment conducted by sociologist Devah Pager, 17 percent of whites with criminal records received callbacks, compared to 34 percent without, while 5 percent of blacks with criminal records received callbacks, compared to 14 percent without. The striking finding from this research is that whites with criminal records receive a greater number of callbacks than blacks without.
Without legitimate employment, the pressure to find other sources of income grew. Parolees with criminal histories wrestled with whether to continue criminal careers at the motel. Many claimed to have been involved with crime from a young age, and the temptation of criminality was enduring.
The prior housing situations of many social refugees were often quite dire. Compared to the inside of a car or a shared room at a shelter, the Boardwalk Motel was tantamount to a safe haven.
Many residents claimed that their criminal behaviors were the result of early experiences. They used early involvement in crime both as a status symbol and as a foundation for future behavior and identity creation.
Unfortunately, by bringing vulnerable individuals together without offering them any necessary supports, criminal justice and social welfare policies designed to correct or support had a hand in creating a criminogenic environment at the Boardwalk Motel.
...some actually reinforced criminal behavior during peer aggregation of high-risk populations, due in part to the desire to impress peers through deviance.
Lois Presser writes that “the self cannot be known without reference to other people.”
By presenting narratives of preferred self, residents created boundaries between themselves and other residents and resisted particular stigmas.
It was distressing that the failures of the mental health and social service systems meant that those taking up caring activities had so little to work with themselves.
Closing the Boardwalk was not a victory for anyone involved. If anything, it was the result of the dangerously potent combination of government ineptitude and community efforts to sanitize social space.
Erving Goffman's conceptualization of stigma as “an attribute that is deeply discrediting” to the point “where we tend to impute a wide range of imperfections on the basis on the original one.” The stigma attached to the Boardwalk Motel was so powerful that outsiders viewed its residents as nothing but a social problem.
To describe why residents ended up at the Boardwalk, I conceptualized them as “social refugees” or persons who were forced to relocate within their own country of citizenship because of the influence of social context and/or social policy.
I was saddened, but not surprised, to hear residents tell me, “It doesn't matter,” and, “Nothing is going to change for people like us.” These beliefs were symbolic of a larger societal pandemic that can be conceptualized as widespread disenchantment with the American Dream.
English vagrancy laws have evolved into U.S. ordinances that “are a reflection of society's perception of a continuing need to control some of its ‘suspicious' or ‘undesirable' members.” That these labels have been affixed to those on the economic and social margins is an artifact of a capitalist society that equates explicit material consumption and buying power with human worth and dignity.
Marginalization will continue as long as stark class inequality exists and as long as capitalism creates commodity from basic human needs that some would consider rights.
Derniers mots
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
When I began my research, it was my hope that this insight into the Boardwalk and its residents could be used to address their vulnerabilities and improve their lives. However, as the final chapter of this book will show, hope sometimes goes only so far. -Chapter 5
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Residential motels have long been places of last resort for many vulnerable Americans-released prisoners, people with disabilities or mental illness, struggling addicts, the recently homeless, and the working poor. Cast aside by their families and mainstream society, they survive in squalid, unsafe, and demeaning circumstances that few of us can imagine. For a year, the sociologist Christopher P. Dum lived in the Boardwalk Motel to better understand its residents and the varied paths that brought them there. He witnessed moments of violence and conflict, as well as those of care and compassion. As told through the voices and experiences of motel residents, Exiled in America paints a portrait of a vibrant community whose members forged identities in response to overwhelming stigma and created meaningful lives despite crushing economic instability. In addition to chronicling daily life at the Boardwalk, Dum follows local neighborhood efforts to shut the establishment down, leading to a wider analysis of legislative attempts to sanitize shared social space. He also suggests meaningful policy changes to address the societal failures that lead to the need for motels such as the Boardwalk. The story of the Boardwalk, and the many motels like it, will concern anyone who cares about the lives of America's most vulnerable citizens.
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This is similar to Desmond's Evicted but, unlike some comments I've seen, does not cover the same group of marginalized people in America since most of the narratives in Evicted are people who had a narrative that was disrupted. Most in Exiled never had the opportunity to even begin a life's narrative before they were shunted into the furthest extremes of the margins. They made plenty of mistakes and were not innocent bystanders in their troubles but were definitely assisted in their downward trajectory by misguided policies as well as being stigmatized, often far more than deserved. That said, the narrative nature of Desmond's book makes it a far smoother read while Dum certainly uses some sociological terminology and concepts that, while specialized, are not hard to grasp. But it does disrupt the flow of the book.
I found Dum's conclusion and suggestions for change to be both on target and a bit vague. I know, how can they be on target and vague, and I am not sure I can explain it very well. While reading them, I was nodding along in agreement for the most part. Some specific ideas were very good. Yet when I finished and thought about how one might implement the suggestions, I found myself unable to come up with a lot of ideas without making my own additions in order to focus the suggestions. That is not necessarily a bad thing but I think a little more specificity and fewer broad sweeping statements as suggestions would help to get more readers interested in doing something rather than just reading about it as a sort of soul-cleansing exercise.
I would recommend this to anyone interested in the plight of the poor, the marginalized and indeed of the country. If we can't, or won't, take care of all citizens then what kind of a people are we?
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. (